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Shyrokyne: Home and Battlefield

28 March 2015

Following intensive negotiations and brokering of a localized ceasefire with the opposing sides, a team from the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine led by the Deputy Chief Monitor, Alexander Hug, entered Shyrokyne on 26 March 2015 to verify the ceasefire and assess the humanitarian situation. The visit was undertaken by armoured vehicle and on foot. (OSCE)

Shyrokyne has been exposed to heavy fighting for months, which left each house damaged by live fire or shrapnel; up to 60 percent of them are destroyed. “What my colleagues and I saw today was catastrophic,” said Hug. People who remained in the village had to seek shelter in very challenging conditions. They live without water and electricity. “We met a family with small children who were shell-shocked and did not want to leave their house despite the fact that the ceasefire was holding for the second day,” Hug added. (OSCE)

Shyrokyne residents told SMM monitors about the body of a man who had died some 8 days prior to the local ceasefire facilitated by the OSCE on 25 March. Monitors recovered the body from a house and handed it over to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). (OSCE)

Children in Shyrokyne in southeast Ukraine have not been able to go to school since September 2014 due to the shelling. On 26 March SMM monitors observed that the local kindergarten and school had been destroyed. Unexploded ordnance is a major threat to children in the area, and schools throughout the conflict zone have been badly damaged from fighting. Many children have been out of school for months. (OSCE)

SMM monitors will continue patrolling the area in southeast Ukraine in order to report on the general security situation, facilitate dialogue and access and support efforts to bring about peace. (OSCE)

In the late evening hours on 27 March 2015 Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine Ambassador Ertugrul Apakan expressed his disappointment that both sides have breached a local ceasefire arranged by the Mission two days ago in Shyrokyne, southeast Ukraine, and urged them to stop fighting immediately.

Despite a ceasefire that is mostly holding, Shyrokyne is among a handful of hotspots in east Ukraine that continues to be exposed to shelling.